ISSUE 64 • ANDROID ADVISOR 27REVIEWIt doesn’t help that the Xperia 1 is one slippery
customer – there are slippery glass phones, and then
there is the Xperia 1. Put it on any hint of a non-flat
surface – sofa arm, book, glass table – and the thing
visibly slides towards doom.
Despite the dimensions, I found I grew to really
like the Xperia 1’s odd form factor. Going back to the
iPhone XR made Apple’s phone looks comically short
and chubby, rather than the Sony too tall and thin.
The purple unit I reviewed is not to everyone’s
taste but is a deliberate hark back to the original
Xperia Z of a similar hue that Sony dropped after a
while. It’s the boldest choice of Xperia 1 – otherwise
you can go for black, white or grey.
Cameras
Where Sony excels with its actual cameras, it
has usually fallen short with the quality of its
smartphone cameras. It supplies hardware to many
other manufacturers, but these days smartphone
photography is also defined by the software
processing that complements great hardware.
The Xperia 1 is the first Sony phone with triple rear
cameras: 12Mp f/1.6 main sensor, 12Mp f/2.4 telephoto
and 12Mp f/2.4 ultrawide. This is welcome given the
XZ3 only had one and lets you get better zoom, but
the ultra-wide lens’ fisheye warping of the edges of
images is off-putting enough to never bother using it.
Until now, imaging on Sony’s flagship Xperia
phones have lagged noticeably behind. The
Xperia 1 rights this wrong – partly – by producing
outstanding photos in many conditions. It just feels